


Waste

by Evil_notions



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Destiny, Destiny 2, First Fic be nice, M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-23 23:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19711870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_notions/pseuds/Evil_notions
Summary: A certain hunter is in the middle of what appears to be a wasteland. Wanting nothing more than to return home and tell his vanguard he's in love with him, he will fight to survive.





	1. Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Hey,  
> I hope you like it.  
> Mace is a character I made up a while back. He's a hunter who is very close friends with Cayde and is desperately in love with his best friend.

Mace was standing in the middle of a wasteland. Nothing to been seen to his left or right as far as he could look. He had come here after intercepting a call for help which seemed to have been transmitted from the very spot he was standing on. But … nothing. No sound and no movement except for his own breathing and the slow movements of his cape as a light breeze pushed past him. The wasteland was truly bare. No green nor any rocks. While that didn’t especially bother Mace, what did bother him was the fact that the planet he was currently on wasn’t registered as such. Arzon, as the planet was called, was home to a race of peaceful race of human-like inhabitants with an explicit love for animals and nature. Mace had been here before when the planet had just been discovered and had loved the easy going nature of the Arzonians and had made friends with a few kids who showed him their horse-like creatures. The planet had been filled with life and forests covered most of the surface of the planet. He had been wanting to return but unfortunately had never found the time for it. Until now.

Upon deciding that he couldn’t discover anything, he held out his hand and within a second his ghost was hovering above the palm of his hand. Mace had taken upon calling it ‘Arlan’. Arlan was very much unlike his guardian. While Mace tended to be quiet and preferred to observe, Arlan was loud and talked more than enough for the both of them. Mace appreciated this. Talking had never been his strong suit and after finding that his stutter had come back after having become a guardian, the occasions on which he spoke had become few and far in between. The only one he talked to was his ghost, when they were alone on his ship and Arlan insisted Mace work on his stutter. Right now though, even Arlan was quiet. The ghost had liked the inhabitants as much as his guardian had and was now buzzing around, desperately scanning for any form of life. Mace stood with his shoulders slumped while he waited on his ghost to finish but the hunter held little hope for a nice ending to this trip and a quick return to the tower.

Mace had gotten a message from Cayde earlier in which the hunter vanguard had invited him to get a drink to celebrate a successful mission they had pulled off together a few days earlier. Both hunters had been tasked with retaking a base the Cabal had taken from them. As Cayde didn’t often have the opportunity to get out of the tower he had practically jumped with joy when Zavala had given him the orders to go along with Mace to make sure his hunter didn’t blow himself up. When Cayde had tolled Mace that, his hunter had scoffed. Cayde had laughed and given Mace a shoulder bump. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. After all, the great hero of the Red War can’t be trusted alone with a gun”. At that, Mace had kicked his friend on the shin and immediately regretted it as it was his foot which had ended up breaking a few bones. But in the end Mace had been happy Cayde came along with him. He enjoyed the exo’s constant chatter and light-hearted approach on well … almost everything. Mace tended to become lost in his head and Cayde was the only one who could truly pull him out of his head if he got too far lost in it. 

As for the mission, it had gone well. The hunters quickly took out most of the Cabal present and had little to no trouble clearing out the rest of the base. Both were attuned to each other and with both of them being as skilful as they were, neither had much trouble taking their opponents out. The mission had ended with Mace being blown off a stack of crates though. He had taken out the final Cabal but this one appeared to have been carrying a hidden explosive and upon detonating the blast had knocked Mace off his perch. He hadn’t had time to twist and land on his feet so he had braced himself for a harsh collision with the floor. That hadn’t happened as his vanguard had quickly moved to catch him and safely put Mace on his feet. Not that he’d ever admit it willingly but Mace had enjoyed the proximity to Cayde when the hunter had caught him. He may or may not have been harbouring a crush on the Exo for a while now and the full on body contact had been thrilling for him. So Mace had really been looking forward to spending time with him again and maybe, if he got drunk enough, tell him how he felt. 

But now, as Arlan softly informed him that his scans had found nothing, this plan was pushed to the back of his mind. Summoning his sparrow, Mace decided to take a quick ride through the area in the hope of finding a sign of … something … anything. As he sped over the dry, brown ground the air cooled his skin. He had left his helmet on his ship as it had cracked when he had accidentally dropped it earlier and he had no spares with him. He hadn’t expected to be in need of it today as he had no missions to complete nor bounties to pick up. Picking up speed, he sped towards a big boulder he thought he saw in the distance. As he got closer he noticed that there was indeed a big object, but not a boulder as he previously had assumed. It seemed to have a more man-made shape with a large grey cloth draped over it which the wind, which had now picked up, moved. The cloth was pinned down by something but from this distance Mace couldn’t make out what it was nor could he see what the cloth was covering. 

He skidded to a stop a good hundred meters from the mysterious object. Without a word he let Arlan scan it. The ghost only buzzed for a short while before turning to his guardian. “I don’t know-there don’t-I can’t find anything, guardian. Nothing appears to be there except the cloth and a wooden pallet”. At this Mace raised one of his eyebrows. He hadn’t been out in the sun long enough to suffer from hallucinations, that he knew for sure. So was someone trying to set a trap for him or could it be that the cloth was protecting the object from being seen easily? He didn’t know but knew he had to check it out. The call for help had to have come from somewhere.

The hunter dismounted and took his kinetic weapon of his back. He currently had the Trackless Waste equipped as he liked the sturdiness and handling of the gun. Mace knew he had better guns at his disposal but upon receiving this particular gun he had taken a shine to it and it was still one of his favourites up to this day. Cayde would tease him endlessly for it and only shut up when Ikora would tell him to stop pestering his hunters. Now, he quickly checked his ammo and after being satisfied with the amount he had in all guns, he moved closer. Gun raised and with his ghost softly whirring behind him. Mace didn’t like to keep his ghost out when it wasn’t necessary but in situations like this he needed the observations Arlan could make. When he was only a few meters removed from the object he could see it more clearly. It appeared to be a vehicle. Tall and bulky with enough rusty parts to make Amanda itchy. Its entrance was partially hidden by a wooden pallet leaning up against the vehicle. Without needing to ask Arlan scanned the vehicle and told his guardian he still couldn’t identify anything except the pallet and the cloth. The latter appeared to be made of thick cotton which surprised Mace as cotton normally wasn’t able to hide anything it was covering from the scans of ghosts. 

He looked around for any signs of people near but still only saw the wasteland around him. “Be careful, guardian” his ghost told him as he decided to take a look inside of the vehicle. Nudging the cloth aside at the side of it with the barrel of his gun, the name of the vehicle was revealed. ‘The Volar’. It was written with paint. Sloppily and without any grace written on the vehicle’s side in black letters. Mace looked back at his ghost with an eyebrow raised, wanting to know if there was any record they had of a vehicle with that name. “It’s a freight vehicle. It’s unique because of the materials it’s made of. Its inventor, Jay Mayres, used ancient tech to make it invisible for scanners to detect. That explains why my scans couldn’t find anything.” Arlan buzzed happily at being able to find something. “I don’t understand what it is doing here though. Mayres lives and invented ‘the Volar’ on Nessus. I don’t understand any of it”. ‘You and me both, buddy’ Mace thought. 

He couldn’t make any sense of the whole situation. Even if the planet surface was destroyed there should have been an alarm going off at the tower and if it had just happened a few minutes ago, the hunter could have maybe believed no one knew yet but the wasteland appeared to have been there for quite a while so that was highly unlikely. It appeared as if the entire planet had been cleansed. Right down to all plants, big or small. Simply wiped out of existence. Mace had trouble believing he was on the right planet. It couldn’t be. Maybe he had a navigational error. When he had first seen the planet from space it had looked as it had in his memory though. An inspection by Arlan told him the ground had been like that for at least 2000 years. That couldn’t be right. 

The hunter stood still for a moment, going over his options. He definitely needed to contact the tower, regardless of whether he was on the right planet or not. Either his ship had navigational issues which would need to be fixed or something was really wrong. In both cases, if from the atmosphere the planet had looked healthy and alive, it shouldn’t be so dead. It doesn’t work like that. He signed for his ghost to send a message while he slowly pushed the pallet out of the way, wanting to see the inside of the vehicle. His entire body was tense and ready for a fight despite there being no apparent cause for one. The pallet clattered to the ground, dust flying into the air where wood hits dry ground. Mace finally could see the inside of the vehicle. It was rather big and filled to the nook with boxes. Tiny bits of rope decorated the sides of the vehicle and Mace could barely make out the red colour they were supposed to be, having presumably faded over the years of the Volar’ s disuse. As Mace was about to step into the vehicle to inspect the front better, his ghost called him back. “Guardian, I am unable to reach the tower. It appears all communication from this planet is being blocked by some sort of shield. I am unable to get anything trough.”

Mace mentally cursed and couldn’t stop himself from kicking the dirt with his heavy combat boots once. Of course communication was blocked. Fuck. He breathed through his nose for a while and then decided to finish inspecting the Volar and then go back to his ship so he could fly out of orbit to attempt contact with the tower. Also to warn Cayde he might need to cancel on their plans. He’d like to have Cayde here right now. Especially in stressful situations, Cayde was always the one who would ground him and lighten the mood. Reaching in his pocket, the hunter touched the bracelet his vanguard had once given him. “Here, to think of me when you for some reason forget me. Only witches causing memory loss is acceptable in that case”. Cayde had winked at him and given him the bracelet. It was essentially just a few brown hairs strung together into a braid with a small bead interrupting it every few centimetres. It wasn’t much but Mace loved it and always had it on him. Now if only he could wear it more proudly to show the world he was Cayde’s. That would be ideal. Yeah.. 

After a few moments his nerves were calmed again and he headed into the vehicle, gun first. He peeked around the corner and saw that there was just a single pilot chair and basic controls. The chair was ragged and looked immensely uncomfortable to sit in. There were springs visible and Mace was pretty sure he saw some holes which looked suspiciously like a rat had been chewing on the chair. Pressing a few buttons, he wanted to see if the vehicle would still work. No reaction. Arlan was once again beeping around busily and informed him the engine was gone. Ah, yeah. No way the thing was moving in that case. Normally he might have looked around for some junk he could use to replace the motor but with what he had seen from his surroundings, he doubted that would be doable. Sighing, he turned around. He lifted the lid of one of the boxes. There was something inside but thanks to a small cloth covering the contents, the hunter couldn’t see what. Carefully he lifted the cloth and cursed softly when realising what the box contained. It was fucking grenades. His ghost scanned the other boxes and confirmed that the other boxes contained the same. They had literally walked into an explosive situation. 

Careful to not disturb any of the boxes, the hunter turned around and made his way out of the vehicle. He had barely stepped outside when he heard the loud bang of a gun firing and felt a bullet whizzing past him. Head whipping to where the shot had came from, he saw a big ship hovering near the Volar. How had neither him nor the ghost heard them coming?. The sleek but big ship was almost piling with what appeared to be bandits. They looked humanoid and were all dressed in the same black outfit. Everything they wore was black except a small yellow rope which hung tightly around their hips. All wore masks resembling an animal. The masks were realistic and appeared to actually be made of fur. The only thing distinctive about the masks was the eyes. All eyes were bright yellow lights. Piercing and harsh. Who they were or how his ghost hadn’t been able to detect them before, Mace didn’t know. But what he did know was that more shots were being fired at him and he was standing dangerously near a vehicle filled with explosives. Yeah, probably a good idea to move.

Arlan blinked out of view, careful not to get shot. That would be very dangerous for his guardian. Said guardian was now shooting at the bad guys of the day while quickly moving away from the Volar. The hunter hummed contently as he felt the energy buzzing under his skin, ready to help him out. Once he deemed that he had shot enough baddies, as he just mentally started calling them, he jumped up to be the same height of the ship, noticed the engines of the ship were visible and released the energy inside of him. His golden gun whipped out, he shot the engines quickly and precisely. The explosion killed the remaining baddies, except for one who had managed to jump off the ship before it exploded. Wanting answers, Mace didn’t shoot this one. Instead, he threw one of his knives to knock the gun out of the baddies hand/claw? and another to pin the baddie to the vehicle which had thankfully not exploded. 

Gun still up, the wary hunter approached the baddie. Once close enough, he tentatively reached out and removed the phoenix mask this one was wearing. He had been very wrong in his assumption that these had been simple bandits. Its face was purple, eyes snake-like and red and the shape of its head reminded Mace of a melon. It was very round with none of human features like a nose or ears. Instead it had its two eyes where normally the ears would be and a big hole in the middle of its face. In the hole the hunter could only see black slime and what looked like a few veins. He most definitely did not know what race this creature in front of him was. Arlan did not know either. There were no records of anything like what they were seeing. Mace sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, tired. He didn’t like not knowing what was going on and it didn’t seem like he would get any answers soon. 

The creature started making low hissing noises, much like a cat would when in danger or angry. The hole in its face started to contract and little purple veins started showing all over its head. Mace was curious and against his ghost’s advice, took a step closer. Pressing the gun against its head he forced one of its eyes to look at him by tilting the head to the left. “Who are you? What are you?” his ghost helpfully provided. Its eye focused on him and seemed to lure him even closer. Before he could act on this pull, the creature threw its head back and let out a loud screech. The knife Mace had previously pinned it down with disappeared and it lashed out at the surprised hunter. The later managed to dodge and immediately lifted his gun to kill the bastard who didn’t appear to speak English and most definitely wasn’t planning on helping him. The creature however didn’t attack him. 

As soon as the hunter had dodged, it had turned around and thrown a grenade it had previously hidden on its body somewhere into the vehicle behind it. Mace quickly took it down by a single shot in the head. He hadn’t seen the grenade being thrown but his ghost had. “Guardian, run!”. Without question the male turned and ran, summoning his sparrow in the process. But, as soon as he was sat on the sparrow, the Volar exploded. The hunter was nowhere near far away enough and was harshly blown off the sparrow onto the ground. As soon as his head collided he blacked out. Last conscious thought being of Arlan, hoping the ghost had been smart enough to not have been hurt by the blast. That would really suck.


	2. Dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is!

_Rain .. it was raining softly. The rain fell on the soaked stag grazing peacefully in the meadow. Its antlers not menacing but instead they looked slightly rugged and soft, daylight streaming through the trees bathing the animal in a soft golden glow. Mace was sitting across the meadow, sat in a typical hunter sprawl. He felt relaxed and his head was resting against a tree. Its bark felt rough but nice against his skin. The hunter wasn’t wearing any armour, just a thin shirt. He wondered if the deer knew he was there. A soft sigh escaped his lips, content. The deer looked up at that sound, powerful body pulling its muscles taunt, ready to fight or flee. Mace kept still, not wanting the beautiful animal to run off. He appreciated its quiet company. Kept safe from the rain by the tree branches, he slowly lift up his arm and showed the stag his open palm, inviting it to come over and take shelter with him. The animal approached, slowly but steadily, like it knew the guardian had no bad intentions but it was still wary due to its nature and inexperience with humans. Stopping a few feet away from Mace, it stretched its neck and reached out to softly touch its nose onto the palm, asking contact. The hunter held his arm steady and his breathing even, determined to not scare the animal off. He could feel the rough and wet texture of its nose touch his skin for just a second_.

Then his side burst out in intense pain and he doubled over, clutching his side.

Mace woke up.

His side did really hurt. Coughing and struggling to breath, did the hunter open his eyes. Or.. tried to. One eye seemed to be swollen shut, a slow pulsing steadily making him want to gauge his eye out. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how long he had been out and why his ghost hadn’t healed him yet. The other eye he could open, although not completely. He could see dry ground, much like on Arzon, leading him to believe he was luckily still on the same planet. Besides that, nothing that could have given him the sharp pain in his side. It was easing a bit, giving Mace the opportunity to steady his breathing and take in what he could. He went to get up, having previously been lying on the ground, but found he could not get up further than a sit. His hands were chained to something behind him by two large, clunky chain on separate sides of his body. Testing his range he lifted his arms up and stretched them out. He had some range but could not reach further than his head.

Twisting his body as much as he could he tried to look behind him, wanting to know what he was chained to. He saw the upper edge of a rock and crawled backwards to sit against it. From what he could see, there was nothing around him. It looked like he was still on Arzon and he thought he could vaguely see the Volar a good distance away from him but he wasn’t sure. It could also be the heat, making him see things. Besides that, he wasn’t able to spot anything. Checking himself he discovered he was, unlike in his dream, still wearing all his armour. His guns were gone though, only leaving him with his knives and grenades. Weird, but not the worst thing. As a hunter, he was quick and smart. Knowing how to use his knives and body to get himself out of harms way was one of the first thing he had learned.

When he had become a guardian, Mace knew little about using knives. He wasn’t especially bad with them, but they had never been his favourite weapon and he had struggled with aiming them in the beginning. That changed when a certain Vanguard had shown up while he had been practicing with the knives and had laughed at the hunter’ s frustrated groans as he again failed to miss a target in the head, instead hitting the fake cabal in the upper chest. “I mean, he’d still die, you know?” Cayde had said to him. Mace had laughed and agreed with the Exo but had told him that while yes, the cabal would die in a normal situation, it would not be as quick. “Speed is survival” Mace had told him.  
“Very true, well then. Try hitting him in head then”  
“You do it”  
“Sure”

Cayde had taken one of his knives, walked behind Mace, told his hunter to turn around so he was facing him and stepped closer to him. “Now, watch carefully”. Cayde had slowly demonstrated how to hold the knife, long robotic fingers curling around the leather handle of the knife. “You have to feel like you’re gonna hit it. Know it on the inside that you’re able to hit your target exactly where you want to. You’re a hunter. I know you can do it.. Feel the swagger”. Mace had snorted at that, amused by his Vanguard’ s choice of words. Then Cayde turned his head to the side, to not look at the fake cabal, and threw the knife. It soared past the startled hunter in front of him, cutting off a small strand of hair which had not wanted to be tamed into Mace ‘s usual hairdo. When the later turned around he saw that Cayde had indeed hit the target in the head. “See? Feel the swagger” Cayde had done a little goofy dance and winked at him.

Ever since that day, Mace had practiced more and gradually found that hunter cockiness. Every time he took out one of his knives he thought of that memory with Cayde and smiled to himself. Even now, stuck in the middle of a wasteland with no idea as to where his ghost or guns were and chained, the knives were of comfort to him.

Focusing on the situation at hand, he knew he’d have to get out of his cuffs. They were heavy on his wrists and were too tight for him to just twist his hands and get out of. He was a little surprised the cuffs looked just like the cuffs he knew were used way back in the day on earth. They were still used, he knew that, he just hadn’t expected to see them so far away from earth. Reaching into a hidden pocket along his left leg he hoped to still find the pin he had hidden there in case of emergencies like this. Holliday had laughed at him, after she had found out he carried a pin on him.  
But joke’s on her now, as he felt the pin with which he could surely free himself. Mace knew how to get out of cuffs, had since he had been a child. He’d been at the mercy of others too many times for him to trust anybody but himself and learned skills like this when he was still young. A common misbelief was that one could get out of cuffs by breaking their thumbs and pulling their hands through the cuffs. That, Mace had early on discovered, did not work as it didn’t actually make the hand smaller or fit better and he had found that the pin way was safer and sure as hell hurt way less.

The hunter straightened out the pin and inserted it into the upper cut out of the lock on his left wrist. He added tension and pressed the pin up. That did the trick and released the cuff. He quickly made work of the other cuff and rubbed his wrists as he got up slowly. His legs hurt, he had aches all over his chest and his face felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand needles. Tentatively reaching up he felt what felt like glass shards embedded in his face, probably shrapnel from the explosion. God, his ghost! He held up his hand, willing Arlan to come blinking into existence. The only thing he felt was a slight pull, telling him that at least his ghost was still alive and well, but nothing more. He cursed to himself. Someone must have captured his ghost in a ghost trap, making Arlan unable to help his guardian.

Deciding he needed to move and see what he could make of the situation, he went to go around the rock. After taking his first step, he immediately discovered that was not gonna be as easy as he thought it would be. His right leg gave out and a sharp pain went up both legs. Crying out softly in sudden pain he fell on his knees. His cape swirled behind him, moved by his fall. It came to rest on his side, flickering softly due to the wind kicking up again. Dust was whirling around in little circles on the dry ground. Some came to rest on his figure, making him feel spent and just a bit done with it all. He dropped his head down, silently thinking over what to do.

Distracted as he was, the usually sharp hunter didn’t see a small shimmer in the air. Foretelling his future and his long, long way to getting that date with his favourite hunter. For now, for all Mace knew, he had to stop thinking about all what was going wrong and get up and try again. With a grunt, he got up and started walking, determined to get to the bottom of what happened to the planet and its people, what the strange creature had been, who had chained him (and beaten him up) and then just disappeared and most of all, to get back to Cayde and tell him all about the stupid adventure he had just been on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this chapter may feel a bit weird. I have been very sick all week (still am) so my mind is all over the place. I just really wanted to get something out so I hope you can forgive me! Next chapter will be better, longer and actually will progress the story:)  
> UPDATE: Sorry for the long wait but something major happened and I couldn't find the energy or motivation to write for a bit. But now I'm finishing up the next chapter which will be released tomorrow! (8-19-2019)


End file.
